X2 - Castle Amber 2026 - Session 3 - Split the Party Quarce

There are a lot of good reasons not to split the party. In the last session, Lance and Alexei wandered off after a woman they saw. After a brief combat, the party spotted the Raskasta and split again. Merry and Nononn decided to confront the Raskasta to see where Lance and Alexei went. Rety and Jude led the rest of the party to the Indoor Forest before changing their minds and choosing a different course. Rety and Jude fixated on room 8, the obvious trap. 

Let us get to the fourth division of the party. 

Pizzaballa was sitting at the bottom of the stairs to the foyer. Black smoke poured from the double doors. He was watching the Demos Magen* with interest, trying to think of a name for each of them. One was rubbing down Jude's horse while the other watched rabbits frolicking in the grass. There was a mighty TH-ruHMP! as Jude and the gang threw another flask of oil at the slimes. 

"Burning flasks of oil do 1d8 per round of damage," said the Magen watching the rabbits. "That is an awful amount of damage for such a low-tech utility item." 

Pizzaballa shook his head, "We aren't supposed to talk about it. It's not in the spirit of the game. But I do get your point, kind sir." 

"Who says?" the other Magen asked. 

"'Who?' indeed," answered Pizzaballa. "If I may be so bold, may I call you 'Warren'?" 

The Magen looked pleased. "We would be pleased. Warren is a good name. Where does it come from?" he asked. 

"The French, I believe. People from Jean-Louis's homeland," said Pizzaballa. 

"Warren, Pizzaballa. What shall we be named?" The Magen had gone back to brushing down the horse. 

"Hmm. Good question." After a long minute, Pizzaballa offered, "Parker, I think 'Parker' is an excellent name for you." 

"I do like it. Where does it come from?" he asked. 

"Well, that is complicated. It started in Old French, then was adopted into Middle English. Many people would be familiar with it from a comic book character. His name was Peter." 

"I do not like Peter. I like Parker," said the second Magen. "What does it mean?" 

"Well, a parker one who watches or cares for animals," answered the Cleric. 

A sizzle came echoing from the doorway and the black smoke was softened by a gout of steam. 

"Do you really think the wet carpet will stop them from burning down the castle?" asked Parker.

Pizzaballa shrugged. "Maybe. I hope."  

Before this session, I ran a poll among the younglings I know. Room 8 held a gray ooze, a giant green slime, and a black puddling. It is a classic Gygaxian trap for the unwary. I also mention that I have run this module several times. The first time, the party avoided the trap with a 10-foot pole, as any good D&D player would. The second time, it was throwing objects, like the towels from room 6. After that, everyone immediately identified the ooze, the slime, and the pudding by description. 

I polled 7 players between 20 and 25 years of age. All 7 of them identified the threat from the description only and proposed throwing as much burning oil into the room as possible. Zero modern players are fooled by this scenario. 

To paraphrase Octavia Butler, "To be remembered is to be lied about." 

I have taken great liberties with this module. There are movies, French, Shakespeare, Old and Middle English, comic book characters, cell phones, etc., in these posts and sessions. This is because my campaign takes place in a fallen version of our world. I can do that. 

In running the poll, this scenario SEEMS not worth running. But is that true? 

No, this is the lie. No one has fallen for the obvious trick of setting foot in the room for four decades of my play experience. Since that is a fact and true, I have to ask, "What is the point of this scenario?" The obvious trap is not the purpose.  

Moldvay isn't Gary Gygax, but he wrote to his level and style, which includes some fairly deep thinking. Room 8 was meant to be a sink for resources. Look at my characters (click the link to see that post). I made mistakes when creating these characters and did not permit myself time or thought to properly equip the party. Even still, the party has access to 23 flasks of oil and dozens of torches. 

This scenario needs to be played out because I can't have the party walk into the Indoor Forest with the ability to unload 23d8 points of damage every round. They also cast some spells to give themselves an advantage, like bless and their remaining magic missile spells. 

This is why I let this play out as I did. I won't bore you with the details, but the gray ooze is the dangerous creature here. It has the fewest hit points but is faster and better protected than the slime and the black pudding. I used an Excel spreadsheet to run through the combat several times. The RND function is not great for dice rolls, but it is a close approximation. The longest fight took 8 rounds. But used up most of the party's oil and torches. 

Let's collect up treasure and experience: 3000 gp plus 1000 pp in coins. Thomas and Dorian decide to grant Pizzaballa the staff of healing. Jude is offered the sword. This is 888 exp per character. While Pizzaballa didn't participate in combat, he did engage in planning, so he received experience this time. 

Pizzaballa is now level 3. Sybil is a special case; she has the power of a 4th-level Magic-User, but only had 9851 exp due to the use of a wish spell. She is now earning experience towards 5th-level. 

Let me share this album, as it seems appropriate.  

This post is getting long, so we will visit with Gabby, Alexei, and Gabby in Session 3.1 and Nononn and Merry in 3.2. 

*Is Magen a collective noun? For the way I have been playing them up, I think it is appropriate. 

Burn and Etch - Dungeon Terrain Again

I'm on my third run of dungeon terrain. Laser cutting and etching do take practice. In the first image, I cut too many pieces. I meant to have 1 six-inch wall, 2 4" walls, 4 2" walls, and 4 1"x1" walls. I accidentally cut an extra 1x1 that could have been doors or details. 

On the prior run, I ran into a bunch of "fix it in post" issues. The red highlights are places where the laser power was off, or the wood was warped and didn't cut all the way through. The blue highlights are two pieces where I etched instead of burning a cutout. And the real insult is in yellow. Having known I was cutting too many 1x1 pillars, I failed to fix it by removing the parts. Hence the extra parts in the image above. 

The whole "I can fix that" defeats the purpose of having a laser. Handcutting dings up the pieces, causes scratches, or causes blowouts. These are all things the laser should do so I don't have to. 

Once I hammer out these issues, I plan on adding doors, tables, and other scenery to the collection. In a perfect world, I would sell the physical goods. I am hampered by shipping costs, which could be $20.00 per set. That seems self-defeating or at least very limiting. 

I might list them on Etsy or KoFi as a digital file.

An interesting byproduct of all of this cutting was that I made a ruin from scrap pieces. 

Maybe you remember the little structure I showed for my B2 Keep on the Borderlands Sessions. The little building above represents either the left or the right side of the fortified house. This is one of those Bob Ross moments where we know there is a cabin or whatnot, but nothing about who built it or who lived there. 

Since it is positioned on the rim of the valley, over the Caves of Chaos, it stands to reason that either the fortified house was abandoned when the monsters moved in. Or it could have been built afterward, as a beachhead against the monsters. 

Personally, I like the latter. I could imagine that forces from the Keep could have gotten a foothold against the actual monsters, but then it was destroyed with the coming of the priests. Perhaps the zombies and skeletons in the Caves are the former inhabitants of the fortification. 

Grim. 

I like telling myself these little stories. The cool thing about them is that when a character is supposed to have some lore or special knowledge, I can drop these little musings on them so they can tell the party. Sure, the story has to be brief, and it does turn into a game of telephone where the story distorts, but I make the player character's distortion canon to the campaign. It can make Bards, Wizards, and learned Clerics seem more special. 

Next up, we will return to Castle Amber. After that, I'll get painting. And third, I will tell you about The Game of the Weather Witch. 

Taxing Times - An IRL Update and Session 2.5 Update

Real life is really interesting. I helped a friend get her Book Club going. I don't attend Book Club, but I help her vet books. I am reading a lot of books lately. Add in that the Buffalo Sabres are rocking it in the NHL and tax season, and I know I am gearing up for a posting rut. 

I will just have to power through it. 

Let's get this show on the road with Gabby the Witch, who was mentioned in my last post. Castle Amber has a weird and taxing structure for any DM. If you can successfully run this module, you can do anything. 

The structure of Castle Amber is a straight-up railroad. I've played it with others several times, maybe as many as 4 times. The players really enjoy it, so long as you lampshade the railroad. I can guess why this module is written as a railroad: you bought a module with the intention of running it. Therefore, there must be no deviation from actually running Castle Amber. 

That isn't the style of modern games, and to be honest, it was probably never sytle of B/X games, either.

I gave some suggestions to avoid the initial railroad back in Session 0. The railroad doesn't end when the characters enter the misty foyer; it is assumed throughout the whole story. It's structurally built into the scenario. In Session 1, the players encountered Jean-Louis. The way it is written, it seems like Jean-Louis will always be there in the same state the party left him in. The same happens in a bunch of encounters, and in the discovery of the key and the letter for those who would be free. Annoying, but a good DM can compensate for that with some minor changes. 

One of my minor changes is the introduction of the rakshasa. Because of repeated replays over the years, the rakashasa are more often than not neutral or friendly toward the party. I've decided on this run that they will be friendly again. My head canon for the rakshasa is that they are exiles and are using the unusual properties of the Castle to stay out of harm's way. 

That is where Gabby comes in. She is a hierling of the rakashasa and didn't sign up to live in a castle trapped in time. She wants out. She is one who would be free. Gabby knows what must be done because the rakashasa shared the letter/scroll with her, but can't do it herself. This is where the party comes in. 

The witch character class is  from Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch. They have some cool abilities. She is a spell caster who can wear cloth, padded or leather armor, she has 1d4 hp per level and weilds a sling and a magic staff. Of course, she has a couple of daggers. Witches can heal with herbs and cast ritual magic. They also have their own spell list. At the 5th level, Gabby has 2 first-level spells, 2 second-level spells, a third-level spell, and 2 ritual spells. 

The rakshasa have given her tiger-claws, but she has no idea what to do with them. She made a couple of lanyards and uses the claws like clasps for her robes and a buckle for her belt. 

Currently, she has left the rakshasa on the mission for them and to check on her Familiar named Gronk in the Indoor Forest. I "decided" Gronk is a giant rabbit because I have a giant rabbit. 

Alexei and Lance have abandoned the party to follow her. Typical. 

The remaining party members know about the rakashasa in the Study, they know someone entered the Indoor Forest, and they know they haven't searched Room 8, Servant's Quarters. They detected the green slime in there, but since Alexei and Lance vanished, they have other fish to fry. This is where session three will pick up. 

As always, I am using my favorite B/X rules, Old School Essentials. You can grab the "Basic" set for free on DriveThru. It put Basic in quotes because the rules cover characters up to 14th level and has an attack matrix to 36th level. Obviously, you'll need X2 - Castle Amber. I also have an Oracle resource called OSR Solo. 

Project Detour - Laser and Paint Edition

This week has a lot of detours. I've run the laser 4 times since Saturday. Now I have a lot of items to assemble and complete. I wrote a review and revamped my review page with HTML. I rolled a character for my X2 - Castle Amber campaign and have a piece or two to write on that. Finally, I have broken with Amazon for what I hope is the final time and have a new alternative in the wings. 

Let's go back to front: Amazon disabled my account because I don't generate enough clicks and sales.

Well, yes. There is no solid connection between Amazon and me. I have to dream up really awkward ways to work a link in. I'm not good at sales, and I use that awkwardness as a crutch. It's time to stop. 

What do I have as an alternative? 

Two items and three mentions: 

Awin, an affiliate marketing platform,
Libro.fm, an alternative to Amazon's Audible, 
and finally, Meeden Art, Inc., an art supply company marketing through Awin. 

I obviously love to read. I had hoped to pick up Libro.fm as an affiliate through Awin. They felt I wasn't a good match. I agree. This website is very niche. But I still want to support them and others.  

Let me tell you a bit about Libro.fm. They are like Audible, but their style is different. You can pick from three subscriptions: one book a month, two books a month, and a yearly subscription, with a great discount on 12 books in a year. 

Second, they are totally DRM-free, unlike Audible. 

Third, they allow you to designate a local bookstore as your favorite. When you purchase through Libro.fm, a portion of each membership or individual book sale goes to that bookstore. I have selected Sulfur Books, a glorious little bookstore in Clifton Springs, NY.  (I will come back and post again about Clifton Springs, but not here.)

While I don't have Libro.fm as an affiliate, I can share my membership link like this. When you click that link and place an order, I receive a free title. To be honest, considering the amount I read, that's better than gold. I could not be happier with this deal. 

If you have a website and you like books, maybe you should consider Libro.fm. This is not an affiliate program with approvals and such. It's offered to all of their members, for all users. I love it. 

Awin also led me to Meeden Art, Inc. I am very passionate about painting and drawing, despite not being very good. 

Creating an ad for art supplies is something I wouldn't have to work at. In fact, on day one, I purchased some paints and gave myself two laser cutting projects to support my artistic habits. I overpurchased in the extreme, but I will burn through this paint fairly quickly. 

The reason you are not seeing an ad for Meeden is that I need a tax document to complete the process, and it is tax season. I will be responsible and do my taxes early to get that document. Or, I won't post any ads until I do those taxes at the last possible second. I must roll for impulse control. :) 

Not being too strongly aligned with my TheseOldGames brand, they would be extremely prominent without being an off-ramp. This matches my tactics for DriveThruRPG. I can give you a link, you know what the link is for, and you can partake as you wish. 

And let me thank you and DTRPG again for that support. You and DriveThruRPG easily pay for my web costs. 

Moving backwards, I have created a new NPC for Castle Amber. Her name is Gabriella, or Gabby, and she is a witch. She is trapped just like the party but she has been here for a very long time. If you follow my suggestion and don't completely railroad the party into Castle Amber, you will need links back to your campaign world. Gabby is one of my links to home. 

I will be posting about her in my next run back to the Castle. These links to my Castle Amber series will display all of the posts in that category, so you may go all the way back to the beginning. Castle Amber is an epic module and could take all year to work through. 

In order to generate her, I used one of Timothy S. Brannan's books called Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch for Basic Era Games. This is one of a whole series on Witches for B/X style games. I use the OSE ruleset, and we will see how well these books merge with that system. 

This was also an opportunity to refresh my review page with actual HTML. It is so much easier to update now. Let me know what you think in the comments, either here or there. My pages have a comment section, too. 

Let me share the last item, the item I wanted to be the focus of this post, but failed at. I have a couple of items I rocked out with the laser. The first item was a repeat of physical dungeon terrain. This is the collision of art and gaming. I love making terrain and painting figures. 

The dungeon terrain consists of 1", 2", 4", and 6" walls, pictured in the upper left of this image. They are modular and now have a texture etched on them. In the near future, I will stain one set and paint another. I am not sure how I want them to look, so I want to see both styles. 

I will be doing a follow up post on these little bits and bobs. 

The next two projects are obvious for painting. I was able to cut a palette out of 1/8" plywood. It came out nicely. I thought it would be too thin, but it wasn't. I also thought I would need to bevel the edge, but I didn't do that either. It works nicely as is. 

The final item was a color wheel. Color wheels are a self-teaching tool. However, they are annoying to do on canvas. You need 1/8" or 1/4" masking tape to lay out the spaces. I cannot tell you how annoying it is to mask out 135 or more spaces for paint. 

Etching a color wheel is amazingly fast. I could do this on canvas, but I wanted to try a wood panel. It's nearly perfect. Zoom in, and you will see that I dropped the brush in the red/pink area. If I had masked that area with tape, that mark would have been on the tape. 

Oh, well.  

The final thing I will comment on is my intended structural changes to the website. I have nearly finished the Review Page and this simple change makes it simple to maintain. I will need to do more reviews in the future.  

One other change I made was to my post categories. I now have a template so I can post a whole series of articles and link back to them via a single category search.  That is very useful and was a trivia change all readers can see, but it is non-disruptive. 

In 2026, I will be marching backwards and cleaning up articles and posts, mostly for grammar. For all non-game book reviews, I will be adding my Libro.fm link. Once I have Awin and Meeden Art set up, I will also be applying ads to posts, too. 

Thanks for sticking with me through these changes. 

Review: Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch for Basic Era Games

Title: Craft of the Wise: The Pagan Witch for Basic Era Games
Publisher: The Other Side Publishing
Author: Timothy S. Brannan
Year: 2019
Pages: 67 pages
Rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think... I hope I have all of these witch-themed books by Timothy Brannan. I was hunting for a particular ritual for an upcoming game and post, and couldn't find it. Well, that is because this one title doesn't pop up in the search for "Witch" in the DriveThruRPG app. 

The Pagan Witch has all of the same great artwork you'd come to expect from Brannan's prior works. Again, I took the date above from the forward, which provides excellent insight into why these books were published. The whole series has a great layout and detailed explanations in each chapter. There are no surprise changes from book to book. 

This title focuses on Pagan Traditions. This goes hand in hand with my love of the Romans. While not Roman at all, they were there alongside them. And of course, they didn't get along much. This book covers what it means to be a witch while highlighting what THAT means to other characters, like magic users and clerics. Backtracking to the Introduction, Brannan pulled in the modern-day depictions of a witch. 

Like the other books, it starts with the class description, cowens (assistants to the witch), and familiars. Personally, I think familiars are more "witch-like" than "wizard-like" and enjoy the details given to them in this series. From the class description, he moves on to spells, rituals, monsters, magic items, and NPC witches. This book is well constructed to get the most out of the concept. 

My reason for reaching for this book this weekend was that I needed a ritual spell to cast a particular character in a special light. You'll be seeing Gabby in my next post for X2 - Castle Amber.